Some of us peak in high school, then graduate, and real-life seeps in.
We're disenchanted, disappointed, or unable to deal with the truth of the mundanity of day-to-day existence. How do we remedy the problem? We find reasons to have class reunions, no matter what they may be, big or small. Seth Hirama was stuck in such a fugue. Right out of high school, he married his high school sweetheart, Melanie Baromeo. Three years later, she was pregnant with their second child. Seth worked part-time in the electronics department at Holiday Mart in Pearl City. His evening job found him engineering for a local radio station, his true passion. Couple that with now having to help out his single mom with the mortgage, utilities, car payments, and taking care of a wife and kids. Indeed, the pressure of being thrust into adulthood can get to you. I assumed it got to Seth because Melanie called me on my day off one afternoon."Seth snapped," she said.
"What happened?" I asked.
"We were fighting about the bills, which we really shouldn't have because everything was paid on time, but I'm feeling frustrated not working and being at home with the kids all the time, so as soon as he got home, I just started complaining to him," she paused for a second after that. "His eyes got all glassy, and he started crying. Then he just walked out to the car and left! I dunno where he went!"
Right on cue, I heard a car coming down my graveled driveway, with Rod Stewart music blaring from the stereo system. "I think this is him pulling up," I told her.
"Please tell him I'm sorry and tell him to come home," she begged. "Hold on, Mom wants to talk to you,"
"Billy?" Esther, Seth's mom, was a no-bullshit woman who we all loved in high school. "Let him cool off before you tell him to come home. Go take a drive with him somewhere first. Can you do that for us?"
"Of course, Mom," I replied. "I can do that for sure,"
"Pilly!" Seth shouted from his car while he laid on the horn. He always had a problem pronouncing B words, which always sounded like P. "Pilly, let's go!"
I locked the house and hung up the phone before going to Seth's car. "Don't fucking beep your horn here, you idiot! Don't you see how close together all these houses are?"
"Hurreeeeyup!" He groaned. "I don't have all fucking day!"
I jumped in on shotgun, and that's when I saw Seth wearing his Knack outfit from high school. "What are you dressed like that for?"
"Whaddaya mean?" He squealed. "It's the shit I wear every day."
"Since when?" I scoffed.
"Since all the time, and fuck you, by the way," he countered. "You look like a fucking mime in all black like that!"
His 73 Impala peeled a left turn on Waipahu Depot Road, leaving a trail of smoke while we passed August Ahren's. "What's going on at home?" I asked.
"Same shit that was going on before I left," he answered. "Why?"
He took the sharp right turn at the place that would eventually become the Waipahu Plantation Village, but this was 1983, and the old houses were still there. "Sonny Catito!" We all did it back then, screaming Sonny's name as we drove by because he supposedly lived in one of those old houses. It was rumored that he was a molester and murderer of young boys.
Before I knew it, we were pulling into Leeward Drive-Inn, where we went to get the usual, just like in high school three years ago: three cheeseburger deluxe, three large fries, and three barrel-sized Cokes. "Who's this third one for?" I asked.
"Are you stupid?" He looked at me strangely. "What's wrong with you today, Pilly?"
"There's only two of us, Seth," I retorted. "Yet, you got an extra burger, fries, and drink. Who's it for?"
"Oh my god," he shook his head. "You're retarded! We're walking it over to Pricsilla's house like always! This is shit we do all the time, why are you acting like you don't remember?"
I instantly knew what this was. Seth had a nervous breakdown of some kind where the pressure of being a husband and father had real repercussions for someone who cried for days after graduation to the point of hysteria. The principal herself had to tell Seth that he couldn't hang around the school anymore because it was beginning to creep out the student body. Principal Teshima liked Seth and didn't want to make a scene, but when Seth showed up the next day, she had no choice but to have him removed by campus security. Everything seemed to be alright once he got a job, got married, and started to have kids with Melanie. Little did we know that Seth was already having his fugue moments at work in the days leading up to Seth's episode. He'd black out and have no recollection of what he'd done a few minutes before. He'd play the best of Rod Stewart cassettes on the ghetto blasters in the electronic department. If it wasn't Rod Stewart, it was Tom Petty or Cheap Trick. On his softer side, Seth had a proclivity for James Taylor, specifically Sweet Baby James. Management had already given him a warning because, back then, workplaces didn't offer wellness counseling for their employees. Don't forget, it's 1983.
"Priscilla, who?" I asked.
"You know, Priscilla, my sidepiece," he winked.
"Priscilla Tolentino, the sophomore?" I squelched.
"Keep your fucking voice down," Seth leaned closer and lowered his voice. "She doesn't want me to leave Melanie; she's there to keep me company, and in return, I get her free food from this place. For a sophomore, she's super cool and understanding!"
"Seth, what year is this? What year are we in?" I asked pointedly.
"It's 1980, freak," he shook his head. "Is something wrong with you? I mean, seriously, are you going retarded or something?"
"Don't say that word to me," my tone changed, and Seth knew I was serious.
"I don't mean it," he answered. "It's a joke like how we joke all the time,"
I changed the subject quickly. "We gotta go to your house; I forgot my homework the other night."
Grabbing my burger, fries, and coke, I walked to his car and waited until he arrived. He didn't live too far from the drive-in. His house was next to the parking lot of the Waipahu Community Christian church. As soon as we pulled into the garage, I came around to Seth's side of the car and knocked him out cold with one punch. I hoisted him over one shoulder and knocked on the front door. Mom opened up and let me in.
"He's alright," I assured her and Melanie. "For some reason, he thought it was 1980 and that we were still in high school. I'm pretty sure he had a breakdown of some kind, and who knows?"
"It was the best time of our lives," Melanie said. "Then life happened. I noticed he hasn't been the same since, but I thought that things would change now that he has me and our kids."
"Sorry, for the trouble Mom," I said to Esther.
"We'll figure it out," she said and hugged me.
~
About a week later, Esther called to tell me that she and Melanie took Seth to see a head doctor. Apparently, he was diagnosed with cognitive immobility. It's a condition where people consciously or unconsciously recreate past events in locations they've lived in or are living in. "Which is why," Esther began. "I'm going to start planning class reunions as much as possible and for any reason possible so that Seth doesn't have one of his episodes. It would be great if you could support this," she hoped.
"Of course," I said. "Why wouldn't I?"
An hour later, I was parked on the Foodland side of Holiday Mart in Pearl City. I walked up the ramp past the small food courts on the right, past the smaller counters, and out the front door. I saw Priscilla's Corolla parked in front of the barbershop. She and Seth were in the front seat making out. I said and did nothing. Instead, I waited in the electronics department until he returned from his break. It was usually slow after lunch, giving me ample time to do what I needed.
"Hey," I walked up to him, and out of habit, we did the braddah, braddah, handshake.
"You should check out this new one by Bryan Adams," he said, removing the cassette from the shelf and showing it to me. "This thing sold out an hour after we put it on the shelf."
"Mom called me and told me about your cognitive immobility," I began.
"Oh yeah," he confirmed. "Sorry, you had to knock me out the last time."
"Is it your cognitive immobility that's making you relive your past with my wife, or are you just straight out sleeping with her?" Seth's eyes flew wide, and he took a few steps back. "I'm not gonna punch you here and cost you your job. I wouldn't do that to Melanie, but I will punch you out later, but not here."
I left. When I got home, I told Priscilla about Seth's diagnosis per Esther. It seemed that Priscilla already knew, but she claimed to have read it in some magazine in her office a few months before. "How'd it happen?" I asked her. "You and Seth?"
"Me and Seth? What do you mean?" She balked.
"I was with Seth when he was having his breakdown, where he thought it was 1980 and that he was still in high school. We stopped at Leeward Drive-In and got an extra cheeseburger, fries, and a drink, not for Melanie but for his sophomore side piece, Priscilla Tolentino. The one who didn't want him to leave Melanie but just wanted to be around to keep him company. You're still keeping him company, apparently."
There was silence; there was nothing she could say, even though her eyes told me she was searching for the right words. "I didn't know he worked at Holiday Mart,"
"I don't care," I cut her off.
"I'll call him and end it right now," she said, heading for the phone.
"There's no cutting it off, or any kind of reconciliation, or therapy, or trying again," I said. "We're done; you file, or I'll file, but you have an hour. Your sisters are on the way; I haven't told them anything."
An hour later, Priscilla was gone but her mom, Grace was there out front waiting. She cried and held on to me and asked if there was anyway that Priscilla and I could work things out? I told her that it was impossible but that I would always consider her my mother.
~
Today, I see social media posts about our regular class reunions at bars, karaoke, picnics, or periodically in Vegas or wherever a former classmate is living on the mainland, like Idaho or Pennsylvania. Seth and Priscilla were in all the photos for the first few years, and then he wasn't. Froilyn Iman, formally Froilyn Gumapac, said Seth had been having too many of his episodes and that one day, he took his own life. The following few years after, Priscilla was still in the class reunion photos until she wasn't. Sherelle Yoro told me that Priscilla worked in a high-stress government job and that her diet was not exactly healthy. She died during a surprise inspection at her office, fell dead of a heart attack in front of the entire base command. To my surprise, the next set of high school reunion photos posted on social media had Melanie in them. She remarried not too long after Seth moved out and moved in with Priscilla. Those two didn't last long. However, Melanie met a good man named Martin Querie, and they had two children together. She'd been following the class reunion photos on social media as well. Once it was obvious that Priscilla was gone, Melanie decided it was time to attend. Having outlived her son, Esther was still the hostess. She was the mother to all the lost souls from the class of 1980 who peaked in high school and never got over it.
"I was over it in the first five minutes," Melanie said. "It was actually really creepy. I even thought I saw a few of our classmates who died while we were still in high school, you know, like the ones that got murdered or committed suicide? I even thought I saw Seth and Priscilla! I left after that, never doing that again!"
After Melanie told me that, I realized it was time to get rid of my strain of cognitive immobility. So, I deleted the class of 1980 reunion page on all forms of social media. If it had become what Melanie said it was, then it wasn't a case of not getting over the past; it was a case of the past not getting over you.
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